Premier League footballers accused of match fixing by ex-police chief

A detective who led investigations into football match fixing in Sweden has alleged that Premier League players are guilty of rigging games.

Fredrik Gardare 's investigations saw former Manchester City midfielder Dickson Etuhu found guilty of attempted match fixing. Etuhu was handed a five-year ban from football in 2020 after it was ruled that he had tried to fix a game between IFK Gothenburg and AIK in 2017, with the 43-year-old offering AIK goalkeeper Kyriakos Stamatopoulos around £160,000 to underperform.

And Gardare has now alleged a phone was discovered during a raid on an illegal casino during his final investigation in 2021 that held evidence of multiple Premier League players engaging with a fixer.

"It was very high priority from my side, I set my whole team on this investigation," Gardare told the Daily Mail. "But at the same time, the police said, 'We are finished with this' in December that year.

"We also gave the information to the football federation here in Sweden directly and said, 'This is serious'. Hopefully they called the English FA, but I don't know. This is important for both Swedish football and football in several countries.

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"It's important for England and international football to stop ongoing match-fixing. There was more than one Premier League player (found on the phone). Betting on yellow cards, corners and other aspects in matches.

"That phone is either sitting with Stockholm police or the national police force. I have worked on hundreds of match-fixing cases, and this was the clearest case you could have.

"It doesn't get any clearer than being found on a confiscated mobile phone. It is a very good opportunity to do something about this."

The phone is said to have 'extensive evidence' of players fixing matches in several leagues across Europe, as well as the UEFA Nations League. The report states that the FA have 'not received the investigation's findings', but want to assess them.

In response to Gardare's claims, Swedish FA integrity officer Johan Claesson said : "It is correct that the Swedish FA, back in 2021, received general intelligence from the police that they had found information regarding match-fixing on both national and international level in a phone after a raid against an illegal casino, but the intelligence we received did not contain any specifics (due to the secrecy of the on-going police investigation) that we could act on."

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